Xbox Game Pass Is Getting Much Better By Adding New Releases

Xbox Game Pass is low-key one of the best parts about Microsoft's Xbox ecosystem: for $9.99 a month, it gives you complete access to 100+ games, which means the ability to download and play rather than just stream. In the past there have been some solid titles in rotation, and Game Pass also comes with a discount on full purchases of any game that might be leaving the collection. Today, however, Microsoft announced a major improvement to the service going forward. Xbox Game Pass will now feature new releases from first party studios, meaning that subscribers will be getting Sea of Thieves,State of Decay 2 and Crackdown 3 on release day. The company is also careful to note that big new titles from franchises like Halo, Forza and Gears of War will also be included when they come out. You can read the complete announcement here.

Xbox Game Pass is not the only subscription game service out there, but the inclusion of new releases along with the already impressive library puts it into a different league -- it means that $10 can effectively buy you the new Halo for at least a month, along with a suite of other games new and old. Microsoft might not have the heavy-hitting exclusive library of competitors Sony and Nintendo, but it's not a complete slouch, and a $10 subscription is more than a good deal for someone looking to check out Crackdown 3. New releases could be a great way of getting new subscribers on to the service: players show up just to get a $50 discount on a new game, and then just never unsubscribe.

The big question mark, however, is how long these titles will stick around. A game like Sea of Thieves is designed to be played over the long haul, after all, and anyone that's serious about Halo isn't going to be satisfied letting the new game slide after beating the campaign. My guess is that we'll see a slightly shorter stand from the new releases in an attempt to get players to convert over to full purchase, making Game Pass into a sort of ultimate demo. It also, conveniently, puts the pressure on the quality of the game for those conversions. If Sea of Thieves gets boring after two weeks few Xbox Game Pass owners will buy it outright, but if it's addictive enough it may have a much larger potential audience of players that gave it a shot through gamer pass.

We'll see how it shakes out once Sea of Thieves comes out and we get to take the service for a test drive, but so far this is looking like an excellent expansion to an already solid service.

I'm a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New Republic, IGN.com, Wired and more. I cover social games, video games, technology and that whole gray area that happens when technology and consumers collide.